Playing NFS Most Wanted on Wireless LAN

Being an action and strategy game lover, racing games never entice me. However, NFS Most Wanted is one of the racing games which actually impressed me. I wanted to play it over Wireless LAN with my friends and brother. That is where the problem started. I kept facing the famous ‘Connection Lost to LAN server’ issue. Moreover, to make condition worse, I had one system running on XP SP3 and other on Windows 7 Ultimate.

Many people said to use Tunngle or VPN software, which I didn’t want to; due to my nature of not using software for a work which can be done manually.

Finally, I was able to solve this issue and play game smoothly. Follow the below steps, if you are facing the same LAN issues.

I am hoping that you have connected two or more systems using Wireless LAN via AdHoc Network. It is sort of a Wireless Hotspot created by one system and joined by others.

Once connected, you will need to configure the IP addresses, Subnet Masks and Gateways of Wifi adapter.

Now configure the IP address of this system manually to any valid IP. Avoid using Router IPs like 198.162.x.x or IPs ending with ‘1’ like x.x.x.1. You can set the same one as shown here.

Then set the Subnet Mask and Default Gateway as shown. For fewer headaches, enter Subnet as ‘255.255.255.0’. Default gateway should be different from IP address of this and any other system. Preferred DNS should be equal to this system’s IP address as shown above.

Select Advanced and make sure that IP Settings and DNS are all ok as entered above. Click on WINS and remove any address entered. Also, make sure that you have Default selected as shown.

Next step is to download and put this file Server.cfg file into your game directory. Edit this file to match settings with your system like;

2. Disable Firewall completely on all systems. Restart the game. I found that only turning off the antivirus firewall is not enough. Many times the OS native firewall also needs to stopped (from Control Panel).

3. Try starting the server with XP system first. This works most of the time. LAN servers created by Windows 7 and above are not searchable by XP but vice-versa works.

4. If you are connected to internet on any of the system the LAN play in NFSWM will not work. Little weird but this was the case on my Win 7 system.

I hope you got it working. If there is anything else you want to ask or share then you can leave the comments.